


Out of Luck

by fid_gin



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-04
Updated: 2014-12-04
Packaged: 2018-02-28 04:51:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2719367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fid_gin/pseuds/fid_gin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of <i>Coda</i>, Daryl tells Carol about his time with Beth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of Luck

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I've been consumed by it, so I'm trying my hand at some _Walking Dead_ fic. There's both Daryl/Beth and Daryl/Carol in here, because I pretty much ship them both. Or, I did.
> 
> Spoilers for S5: E8, _Coda_.
> 
> Mature rating for insinuated sex.

“Tell me,” Carol says, her voice gentle as she touches his hand. Daryl wishes she wouldn’t do that. After what she’s been through, Carol should be hardened and cold, and sometimes she is, but when she knows he needs her she’s always there for him, always so warm and kind. Previously, it’s always made him feel stronger. Right now, it makes him feel weak. It disarms him, and he hates being unarmed.

“Doesn’t matter,” Daryl says, his voice gruff. There are still tear tracks visible in the grime on his face.

“It matters to you,” she pushes. “Tell me.”

***

It was shortly after they’d arrived at the funeral home. Being safe, alone in the big, quiet house…it was unsettling, and after he’d asked her to keep singing Beth had lingered in the viewing parlor next to the coffin he’d claimed as his bed. She played and sang, and the room had been darkened by the heavy curtains, and at some point Daryl had drifted off, comforted by the sound of her voice.

He’d woken to find her climbing into the coffin with him.

***

“You loved her,” Carol continues. It’s not a question, but he can tell she’s waiting for a response.

“Don’t know,” Daryl mumbles. “Never been in love before.” And just like that there’s a painful twinge as he thinks of moonshine and cigarette butts and newspapers and shouting things at Beth that he’d never done. Never had frozen yogurt. Never cut his wrists for attention. “I was an asshole,” he admits. “I yelled at her. She just threw her arms around me and wouldn’t let go.”

“Sounds like love to me,” Carol says, sounding tired.

***

“What is it?” Scrambling immediately for his crossbow and realizing he’d set it on that chair several feet away.

“Everything’s fine,” Beth had said, laying down next to him and snuggling, so tiny and soft, against him. Daryl had tensed immediately, and she’d noticed. “You know what you’re like,” she said, her voice light in the dark room. “You’re like a dog that’s been beaten so many times, even when someone nice takes it in it never really trusts them.” Moving closer against him, she’d added: “I’m not going to hurt you. Just…hold me, okay?”

He had.

***

“Fat lot of good it does now,” he says vehemently, spitting the words. “Stupid bitch went and got herself killed, remember?” He wants to be the badass, to hurt Carol, to reach out beyond the grave and hurt Beth, wants to hurt _everyone_ so they feel as badly as he does. “What the hell difference does it make?”

Carol doesn’t answer, just wraps her arms around him and lets him struggle not to cry.

***

He was never sure later who made the first move, but he thought it must have been Beth, because _he_ never would have for fear she’d reject him or think he was a pervert or something. All he knew was that lying next to each other led to her hand on his face, his fingers brushing across her stomach, turned to kissing: small pecks at first, deepening…kissing that went on and on like some delirious dream. Daryl would have been happy just to kiss her all night, but when Beth climbed on top of him, straddled him, he couldn’t stop his body from responding.

“ _How_ old are you again?” Because he was pretty sure, if there _were_ any law left out there, this would be illegal. She’d smiled.

“Always the gentleman, Daryl Dixon.” Slipping off her sweater and raising her bloody yellow shirt over her head.

“Don’t worry, it’s not my first time or anything,” she said, like that answered his age question. “But I wish it was,” she’d added, her voice soft and sad.

***

“I tried to talk her out of it,” Daryl says, dimly aware that, even as he describes being intimate with Beth, he is mirroring these actions with Carol. He speaks against her mouth as they move to lie down together on this stranger’s bed that will serve as their bed tonight, desperate that she understand that he didn’t just _nail_ some little teenage girl, that it meant more than that. He thinks she understands.

He’s surprised that Carol is more passive than Beth had been – maybe because she knows that that’s what he needs right now. Being with Beth was _Please let me always remember this._ Being with Carol is _Please, please, help me forget._

***

After, they’d just laid together awhile, entwined in their coffin, enjoying the stillness instead of being disturbed by it. Beth had rested her head on his chest as he’d absentmindedly played with her hair.

“Everything’s almost _normal,_ ” she’d said. He’d understood but couldn’t resist messing with her a little.

“Thanks, I think.”

“You know what I mean,” she said, nudging him. “We could be any two people right now. This could be our house…the world could still be out there, just waiting for us. Being with you, it’s easy to forget that it’s not.” Daryl had decided against pointing out that she’d never have been with someone like him in the first place, if the world were still out there and normal. “No wonder Glenn and Maggie do it so much,” she’d finished, and they’d both almost chuckled.

After a few minutes, she’d asked “What now?”

“You hungry?” When she’d agreed that she was, they’d dressed and he’d carried her into the kitchen like he was sweeping her across some damn threshold or something.

A few hours later he’d lost her. The next time he’d held her, she was dead.

***

After, they lie together in their filthy bed, not embracing, just holding hands lightly. “We were gonna stay in that funeral home,” he says after awhile. “Together. But it was just another trap. None of it was real.”

Carol sits up on one elbow, looks down at him. “What happened between you was real. No one can ever take that away. And you won’t forget, you’ll just…go on.”

Daryl watches her carefully. “What if I wanna forget?”

Carol smiles grimly, and he knows she’s remembering her little girl. “Then you’re out of luck.”

She lays back down and they start to drift off to sleep. Tomorrow they’ll move on with Rick and the others, headed back towards Washington D.C. even though they know now that Eugene’s full of shit and there’s probably nothing there, either. It’s as good of place as any.

“What I said before,” Daryl says, his voice a soft growl in the darkness. He could be talking about calling Beth a stupid bitch and saying none of it mattered, or he could be talking about saying he’d never been in love before. “Didn’t mean it.”

Carol pats his hand. “I know, Pookie.”


End file.
